


Hound (1984)

by GRAYXOF



Series: 『 WETWORK 』 [1]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen, Parasites, Pre-Truth Records, implied bbkaz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 08:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7928743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GRAYXOF/pseuds/GRAYXOF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's never going to live this down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hound (1984)

 

The sea and sky are uniformly gray, two plates of steel bolted fast to the horizon. Even with the cloud cover Kaz is squinting behind his shades as he limps across the far deck of the Base Development platform. The tarmac is fresh, still tacky under his boots, hasn’t been stenciled over with hazard lines or the company logo, yet.

“Commander!”

Kaz ignores the snap to attention, braces past the recruit– Striker Panther, Security Team, Ukrainian, fultoned out of the desert by the Boss himself. It’s his job, as XO, to know everyone.

Panther drops his salute and falls into step behind him, pacing himself to match Kaz’s doggedly uneven gait. It’s maddening, grating, if he’s got something to _say–_

Kaz pivots on his crutch, lip curled into a snarl before his memory catches up with him at the same time he notices the man’s apologetic expression– for fuck’s sake, he was just following his patrol route.

“Soldier–“ Kaz works hard to turn his snarl into a bootleg smile. “I can handle the perimeter from here. Take a walk.”

“Sir!” He salutes again, hesitates almost imperceptibly before backing off. If he’s confused, concerned, it doesn’t matter. Kaz knows well enough what the staff think of him at this point (bitter, vengeful, capricious) and it’s too late to give a shit. It occurs to him, as Panther’s eyes flick to the vivid scar tissue where his arm used to be, that he’s in an uncharacteristic state of undress: he’d been up all night reviewing personnel files, made a snap decision at five in the morning, and now he’s out on deck in a sweat-stained undershirt with a fucking _diamond_ in his pocket, shivering in the salt air. Yeah. Too late to give a shit.

And, well, about that snap decision…

Kaz finds her at the north end of the platform, dissolved into particle dust and invisible to the unaltered human eye. Kaz’s eyes, of course, have been altered, and he can just follow the blur of her skeleton against the railing. It’s like looking through exhaust from a jet engine, at heat haze in the desert, a mirage–

–he stabs his crutch against the asphalt, twice. “Don’t fuck with me.”

She’s not fucking with him. It’s a courtesy to the men and women working on Mother Base, to be seen in her farce of a cell, or at the Boss’s side, and nowhere else. You know– for morale.

Quiet phases back into the real world, muscles knitting over bone as she turns to face him with the easy grace of a predator. Kaz swallows his revulsion, tries to will away the black stain blooming around his eyes. He can control it, sometimes, but apparently that’s not in the cards today so he throws his proverbial hand on the table and pulls off his aviators, hangs them over the neck of his shirt. He barely manages to keep his balance. 

“When I met–”

 _What the fuck?_ Kaz inhales sharply. He’s furious, mainly at himself, because he started this and now he has to finish it or, honestly? Throw himself overboard. This is not a conversation he should be having on no sleep, shit, it’s not a conversation he should be having _ever–_

Quiet stares him down blankly, waiting for the rest of whatever it is he’s got to say. _Funny_ , Kaz thinks, _she looks kind of like–_

“–Snake…” He leans next to her on the railing for balance, rubs his eyes with his remaining hand. The inky mark across his face only deepens.

_Fuck it._

“…when I met him, I was trying to kill him. We were mercs on opposite sides of– this was Colombia, ’72… it was over, my men were all fucking dead, I was bleeding out in the jungle, he found me and… and, ha, I tried to take us both out with a grenade.”

Kaz nearly laughs as the memory rushes in, he can’t help it. His heart is swelling. “He grabbed my hands and just… no idea how long we sat in the mud holding a _live fucking grenade–_ I’d never hated anyone so much in my life.”

He glances at Quiet, but her expression hasn’t changed. Big Boss burned her alive while barely out of a _nine-year coma_ and handed her ass to her again when they went for round two. One-hit K-O. He decides she’s got just as much to be embarrassed about. He skips the more embarrassing parts of his anecdote anyway.

“Anyway…”

Kaz is usually a better storyteller than this, more lucid, less wanting to throw up into the Seychelles. Maybe words _can_ kill, but here he is, missing his target. Off-balance, in more ways than one.

“…I guess he saw something he liked, ‘cause by the end of that week I was his second-in-command. _Me_. You know I’d never seen a day of real combat before? All my scars were from _him_ , from fighting him every step of the way down. He had no reason at all to trust me, but he knew– right at the start, he– he said... _the battlefield shows us our true..._ ”

He feels like he's been shot full of Ocelot's sodium thiopental, choking back truths he never wanted to admit, even though that's not how truth serum works. It's whatever you want to hear, Boss. I'll tell you anything. He's learned the line between fact and fiction means nothing these days. Quiet is with CIPHER, ex-XOF, but she's here.

Kaz shudders, forces himself to meet her gaze. It’s like looking into the reflective panes of his own sunglasses. He wishes, vaguely, that she’d save them both any further embarrassment and shove her knife between his teeth the way she'd done to Running Crow, back when life and death weren't yet a matter of _keeping your mouth shut_. 

“I hear all the mission reports. You… really have his back out there. In the field.” That's all he says. No need to expand when they both know what that means: that Snake, legend or no, would be dead without her, at Nova Braga or Lufwa or _OKB Zero_ or–

He’s never going to live this down.

Kaz digs into his pocket, fumbling until he finds something sharp and clean between his fingers. Brings it out.

“They came in yesterday… the Boss… he’d want you to have one.”

The diamond glitters in Quiet’s palm and her face opens up all at once– confusion, sorrow, awe. Something else (recognition?) directed at him. Kaz can’t deal with it. He keeps his tone bitter, clipped.

“That’s Brass Hound. Medical Team. She’s the one who figured out you, ah, photosynthesize… back when… well. She wasn’t afraid of you.”

It sounds so fucking _stupid_ when he says it like that. He hates that it’s the best thing he can say, hates that he gave it any real _thought_ , hates that he said it at all. Brass Hound hadn’t been afraid, either, when her Boss put his gun between her eyes. Hadn’t begged. All Kaz had heard through the mic was the sound of Snake’s heart, and now it’s blood roaring in his ears and his phantom limbs are _burning_ and he wants to strangle Quiet with her own utility harness, to just–

Her fist closes around the diamond and for a heartbeat he thinks she’s gonna break his jaw, but he’s literally half the man he used to be and she’s a biologically _engineered_ superweapon and they have nothing to prove to each other. Not anymore.

Quiet moves in and he bristles, ready to crack his forehead right into hers if it comes to that, but she just unhooks the aviators from his shirt and puts them back where they belong. Helps him get his walls back up. He’s been holding his breath and it comes out in a hiss all at once as the world dims into focus. The black fades out, under his skin, behind his eyes.

_What?_

She leaves him there as he desperately tries to parse what the _hell_ he just did. Doesn’t spare another glance back, just gives him a jerky thumbs-up before she vaults onto the scaffolding and disappears.

Kaz’s mouth splits into a sour grin. He’s fizzy with adrenaline, gutted, defeated. Free, in a way. _At least,_ he thinks, as he gets his crutch situated and starts the excruciating hike back to his office, _she won’t tell anyone._

 

**°**

 

 


End file.
